A Pearl in the Rough
by underthedahlia
Summary: A friend lost to time and an apology twenty years late. When Nate left Columbia with Sully, he walked away from Marjorie, a girl who had become a sister to him. But now she's working for Flynn and old pain is hard to forgive.
1. Chapter 1

Pubs had always been her favourite places. Regardless of the country, they were always dark and smoky but still welcoming. Something about all the polish wood and soft leather, she supposed. They reminded her of the old bars back home. The one she was at now was much nicer than the ones she'd grown up around. This one was a honest to goodness British pub, one she simply "had to visit." She had taken the word of her favourite Brit and stopped in as promised. And now there was a half-finished drink in front of her and still no show. She shouldn't have been surprised. He had probably gotten tangled up in something and would have a story to tell when he finally made it back. And, as always, she would listen to it, hanging on every word.

She swirled her drink around, listening to the ice cubes clang around in the glass, and sighed. She cared about his adventures but he had this awful habit of exaggerating just about everything. How many houses he'd broken into, how many treasures he's stolen, how great of a lover he was. Now _that_hadn't been an exaggeration.

The bartender caught her smile and sent one back. "Want another, love?"

Everyone here had a habit of calling her love or dear. It was heartwarming, really. He would sometimes call her love, but most of the time it was Marjorie. Despite her demands he call her something else, he had clung to that name, completely oblivious to how much it bothered her.

"Why not." She said after looking at her watch. She had hoped for shot of Aguardiente, but that was nearly impossible to find unless she was home. So she settled for a rum and coke instead. He had tried to get her to drink whiskey but it wasn't to her taste.

"Rum and coke for the lady." The bartender presented the drink to her with a grin and settled across the bar from her. "Waiting for someone?"

"Unfortunately. He has a habit of being late."

"Most men do." The man laughed and wiped at the dark wood. Marjorie nodded, knowing it was the truth. Men had a habit of being late for everything. One man was nineteen years late for his return.

Brooding over him was worthless and she only every allowed herself to do so when she was feeling particularly low. With one last look at her watch, she gave up, took a swallow of her drink and let herself wallow in self pity.

She had spent a ridiculous amount of her life thinking about him, about the boy who had been her brother for a year. It had been so long it almost wasn't worth it any more. But he had been there when no one else was. He had been her family for that short while. She remembered calling him Francis and the sour looks she would get for doing so. She'd been a street kid her whole life, little more than "girl," or "pest." But he had given her a name. It had just started off as some sort of joke but it meant so much more now. It was a part of who she was. If she had a passport, Marjorie would be there under_ name_as clear as day. He deserved a thank you she had never been able to give him.

He also deserved a punch in the gut and a serious telling off for abandoning her. She didn't even know who he'd run off with, only that she had stayed up for three days in their little alleyway home waiting for him to come back.

Familiar frustration made her hands clench. She'd spent seven years on the street doing just fine and in under a year she had come to rely on one boy so much that it hurt every time she thought about him. She didn't want to think about him but he wormed his way into her thoughts every day. Nineteen years! She didn't even know what he looked like anymore. He had probably changed his name from the stupid one she'd given him. He had probably moved on and forgotten about their makeshift family.

Knowing him, he was probably dead.

Marjorie dumped whatever change she had in her pocket onto the counter and slid off of the stool. One of Flynn's stories wasn't worth what she was putting herself through.

London had been alive with life when she'd entered the pub, but now the streets were empty and quiet. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and headed down the street. Little snowflakes caught in her hair and melted against her face, making the wind feel ice cold as it whipped down the road. It was never cold in Columbia. She'd been ten before she'd first seen snow. No one else had understood her fascination with it, how one flake would melt when you touched it but if you squeezed a handful together, it would stay frozen. One day when she'd been young she did nothing but admire the frost on the window. She liked the way her breath fogged when she breathed in the winter. She liked the way her cheeks turned pink from the cold.

Harry hated the snow. He'd grown up with it and therefore couldn't possibly understand why she found it so mesmerizing. He liked to tease her about it at every chance he got. She liked to tell him that he had lost his sense of wonder. Then he would call her a child for having such a stupid argument.

There were times when all his cocky, better-than-thou antics were too much. She remembered sitting across from him, a plane ticket on the table, sandwiched by two cups of coffee. He had said something, done something … the details escaped her as they always did, but she never forgot the anger. Or the disappointment.

"Marjorie, you'd being a child."

"Flynn, there's a flight to Columbia leaving in two hours. You can either see me off at the gate or we part here." She had hoped, prayed that he would have swallowed whatever snotty remark was forming in his mind and simply said yes and take her to the airport. They could have parted as friends.

His face turned sour and he looked away, as if he couldn't stand the sight of her anymore. "Then you'd better hail a cab."

She had stood then and muttered a goodbye to him. He told her that she'd be back, that they always came back.

And she had. Like some lost girl she had found him again and made a conscious effort to forget every past argument they had had.

A familiar anger wrapped around her, dulling the chill of the night. It was anger at Flynn and his stupid, cocky grin, it was anger at the boy she missed to dearly, but it was also directed at her. A sick sense of self-loathing coiled in her gut and it made her relive every mistake she had ever made. The walk to the hotel felt long despite the short distance. The bright lobby brought no comfort, nor did the plush sheets of the bed in her room. Frustrated and restless, she paced the room, walking from one end of the wide window to the other. She opened the mini-fridge and poured a drink for Flynn; he always liked a drink when he got back from a job.

She stood by the window, watching the door for an hour and an hour more. The drink had gone warm in her hand, something he would point out as soon as he took a sip. Then he would lounge out on the bed and tell her about his newest job, exaggerating to impress her or to boost his ego. Then, once his drink was finished, he would pull her towards him and press his body against hers.

The lock clicked open and slowly, almost cautiously, he appeared from behind the door. He smiled and straightened, saying something about wondering where she'd been.

She imagined throwing the drink at his face, watching the glass shatter his handsome face, leaving glistening shards on the carpet. She wanted to yell at him, as she always did when she was in these moods, she wanted to make him yell at her. She wanted to make him stop treating her like a child, like she was dispensable. She wanted to hurt him or have a fight that left them both breathless.

Instead she held his drink out and climbed beside him onto the bed.

"Warm," he muttered after his first taste. "How long have you been here?"

"Doesn't matter."

Flynn looked at her for a moment, brows pulling down briefly before he continued.

"Well, I wouldn't say it was easy, but I hardly broke a sweat. In and out in under an hour. How's that for efficient?"

Marjorie gave a "hm" of agreement and settled against his chest, listening to his words rumble in his chest.

**Uncharted (c) Naughty Dog**


	2. Chapter 2

Jorie heard him move about the room, pulling things from drawers, shuffling papers. Flynn was always out of bed before her. She was still tangled under the sheets, hair a mess beneath her head. She played with a lock, marveling at how dark it was against the bright white sheets. She had cut her hair perhaps twice in the past six years. Flynn liked it long.

Rubbing her eyes and arching her back until she felt a satisfying _pop,_Jorie turned to where she could hear Harry getting dressed. She would have opened her eyes and mumbled a "good morning" if she hadn't heard his phone ring. Instead she feigned sleep and listened to him murmur into the phone.

"We're meeting up today, love. No, I wouldn't say I need you, but the company would be nice." He stopped and groaned. "Chloe, don't be a pain, it's unbecoming. We'll see you at the cafe in a few?" Again he stopped and this time she could feel his eyes on her. Jorie couldn't hear the voice on the other end but she knew it was Flynn's old friend. She shouldn't have been surprised that it was a woman, but she still found a lingering jealousy spark back to life. Harry had insisted that they needed her help with the job. Jorie wasn't so sure; the line between business and pleasure was often blurred in his mind and she knew him to be anything but professional.

Flynn answered at last, quietly saying, "I'll see you afterwards. Alone," into the phone.

Jorie turned away from him, trying desperately to swallow the hurt that was making her throat tight. She should have expected something like this, she should have known. This wasn't the first time she had found out about his past, and sometimes present, flings. This was however the first time he'd been bold enough to talk about it when she was nearby. Usually she had to find on his phone or computer or she could smell it on him late at night.

Harry snapped the phone shut and tossed something onto the bed. "Wakey wakey, sunshine." He said. Jorie pressed her face against the pillows, hiding from him. She didn't want to look at him, much less have him see her pain.

"Up," he ordered, giving her leg a shake. "We've got to meet someone in ten minutes."

_Why don't you just go alone and spare me the embarrassment?_The words sprang to mind but they never left her mouth. Instead she rolled out of bed and grabbed what he had thrown at her.

"The Istanbul Palace Museum?" she flicked through the pages of the brochure. There was an exhibit on Marco Polo, a map of the museum, and a bunch of coupons.

"I need a bit of research done on the place. Security, blueprints, exits, the works. Also, anything you can get on this." He came up behind her and held a photo in front her face.

"An oil lamp?"

"An oil lamp. I want to know everything about this thing. See if the whackjob I'm working for is actually onto something."

She took the picture, running her fingers over the smooth surface. "When am I doing all this research?"

"After we meet with my friend. I've got to go take care of some things before we leave for the Cayman Islands."

Jorie frowned and spun to look up at him. "The Cayman Islands?"

"Another friend. This is a four person job and, trust me, we need him."

Him. That was promising. At least she didn't have to worry about Flynn 'taking care of some things' with another old friend of his. She turned the picture over in her hands, wondering what they had gotten themselves into this time.

* * *

><p>The cafe was quiet, one where they could all talk without being bothered or overheard by anyone but the owner, and Flynn had made sure that he wouldn't talk. It was amazing what a few hundred dollar bills would get you. Harry was sitting across from her, reading the pamphlet on the museum while she typed away on her laptop. As per usual, she set up an encryption on all her files and continuously deleted everything she'd looked at the minute she was finished with it. She had hacked into the internet server easily enough; it was a nice break from trying to cut around high tech security systems with half a dozen firewalls, proxys and encryptions. She was looking up everything she could find about that lamp, starting with the museum website and gradually filtering down to sites that were nothing more than speculations by every Tom, Dick and Harry. There wasn't much to know about it. It was a relic found on the single ship that had returned from Marco Polo's expedition to China. As far as anyone could tell it was useless, just a piece of junk that's only worth was that it hadn't been lost at sea with the rest of the fleet.<p>

The fleet was the only thing that made Jorie think that maybe this nutcase was onto something. It seemed like something Flynn would be interested in. If she was being honest, the money had been his first interest but money and a treasure that might unlock one of history's greatest mysteries? That was something Harry Flynn could not resist.

"I don't know what your employer is on about. It's got no worth. None of importance, anyway."

Harry shrugged. "If he's will to part with a sum with so many zeros, who am I to refuse?" He pushed a cup of coffee to her. Black with one sugar, just the way she liked it.

"Drink up. Save some research for later."

Jorie grinned fleetingly before going back to her computer. He just wanted her to be busy while he was off with whoever this Chloe woman was. She peered at Flynn over the top of the screen. He was leaning back in his chair, grinning to himself. It made the scar over his lip look crooked. The white line was vivid against his day's worth of stubble. She remembered tracing it last night as he was falling asleep, his fingers lazily running along her back. She had laid her head upon his chest and stayed like that, drawing little circles on his torso until he was sleeping. And in that short time she had forgotten her anger and frustration. Even now, with a beam of afternoon sunlight landing in his hair, turning it gold, she could put aside her jealously and pain and just admire him.

She wondered if he every admired her, if he ever took a moment to just look at her and remember everything he liked about her. Did he ever get the urge to run his hands through her hair for no other reason that to just relish the feeling? Was he ever caught off guard by a smile that made his heart race, or a touch that made him melt?

Staring at him now, it was obvious that it wasn't the case. He was staring at the doors, waiting for Chloe to walk through them. He hadn't looked at her since speaking to her, while she was still peering at him. Jorie sighed and drank her coffee. She'd done enough wallowing for the next few weeks. Now it was time to suck it up and mature about this.

"Harry, I need to-"

"Harry Flynn."

Jorie looked up to see a woman striding towards them, long black hair loose about her shoulders. She walked like she simultaneously owned everyone and knew everyone wanted to screw her. Great.

Flynn jumped up to greet her, making her laugh at something he said. His hand lingered at her waist as they pulled away, something that did not go unnoticed.

"Chloe, this is Marjorie. Marjorie, this is Chloe Frazer."

Jorie raised her hand in a half wave, not too keen on saying anything more than was necessary. Chloe sat down next to Flynn and ordered a drink.

"So, it's been awhile since you begged me for help," she said to Harry with a grin, her accented voice teasing.

"I would not call it begging. But we do need you for this job. And the payoff will be huge, trust me."

Harry had this habit of asking people to trust him without ever following through on it. Jorie took a sip of her coffee and went back to her computer as the two of them dove into their own conversation. She was doing research again but not what Flynn wanted.

The name Chloe Frazer brought up quite a few interesting points. A wanted add, a score of parking tickets and two APBs on cars she owned. It became obvious she was a driver as Jorie searched further. So they needed a safe way out for this job, safer than on foot or a car they owned.

Searching a bit deeper she found a newspaper article linking her to a string of robberies from a few years ago. Jorie rolled her eyes; people were so sloppy sometimes. She was certain there was no paper trail on Flynn since she started working with him. She took care of any video footage of him, changed the name on any of their flights, encrypted all his emails and texts, completely cleared his computer history, the list was endless. Anything to keep him safe, she supposed.

"So," Chloe Frazer, Australian born, semi-professional driver, treasure hunter and university drop out, said, "how do you and Harry know each other?"

Jorie looked at Flynn and grinned. "We met up a few years ago when I was working for the British Museum. He needed my help to get some intel on my boss and I've been working with him ever since." A very bland telling of that tale, but the whole dark fiasco wasn't pleasant to tell. "How did you two meet?" she asked, pushing away the thought of her first meeting with Flynn.

Chloe spoke before Flynn had a chance to take a breath. "We were both after the same artifact but had been hired by two different men. We met over pointed guns once or twice before Harry tried his level best to distract me from the task at hand." She gave a little shrug, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. "I'm not so easily distracted now." She shared a grin with Harry that Jorie did not like. Closing her eyes, Jorie fished change out of her pocket and left it beside her cup.

"You two obviously have some catching up to do," she said, her voice sharp. "I'll leave you to it I'll see you at the hotel, Flynn?"

He made a vague noise of agreement, his attention already taken by Chloe. Marjorie gathered her things, stashing her laptop in her bag and heading out into the chilly afternoon. There was a hotel not far away that had a little bistro and free internet she could stay at for a while. She would have gone back to the hotel if she wasn't worried Flynn would take Chloe back there. She didn't want to interrupt that.

The London chill bit into her skin and settled into her bones. She'd grown up in such a warm country that the cold still got to her. She always made a vow to go home and enjoy one year to spend time with herself but it never happened. Flynn needed her help again or was taking on another job and she always followed him. Saying that she worked with him was a joke; she worked for him and had done so since the moment they had met.

She'd worked for the British Museum as a security technician for a few years after leaving Columbia and honing her computer skills. Her job was to make sure the museum security was up to date and running smoothly. As such, she was one of the only people who knew the ins and outs of the system and the loop holes. Security systems always had loop holes, no matter how high tech it was. It fell to her to make them as hidden as possible.

Flynn came is posing as a businessman wanting to make a donation to the Syrian Modern Art exhibit. The director wanted to ease any concerns he had about the piece being stolen so he had her show him how the security system worked, when and where the guards were posted, everything. The piece he had been offering was worth millions, evidently, and he wanted it to be kept safe.

"This is a very good security system. Motion, infrared, video and audio feed. Glass that reacts to any movement. Remarkable." Harry, posing as a Mr Ford, said as he studied the screens before him.

"Thank you, sir. I designed it myself." She admitted, playing with the corner of her clipboard.

"Really? You're quite talented for someone so young. Where did learn these skills The school must have an outstanding program."

"I didn't go to school, sir." The words had just left her mouth without her thinking about what she'd just said. How was she going to explain where she'd learned to break a high level firewall and masquerade several proxies to cover her own tracks?

But he didn't asked about how she knew it. He only smiled and winked at her. "I see. Now, what can you tell me about Mr. Wilson?" They walked around the museum talking for hours, Marjorie doing everything she could to convince him that the British Museum was the safest place for his precious work of art. By the end of the meeting, he had signed all the forms and had slipped her a piece of paper with a number scrawled upon it.

"If you ever need another job," was written beside it. "A limited time offer," followed. She had thought about it for the following morning, calling the number on her lunch break.

"Mr. Ford?"

"Ah, Marjorie, I was hoping to hear from you."

"Really, sir? I have to say, your note was cryptic. I'm still not sure what this is about."

"I'm offering you a job with much better pay than the one you have now. The pay may be … irregular, but it will always be a healthy sum of money."

She leaned back in her chair, twirling a pen between her fingers. "What would be required of me?"

She heard his smile through the phone. "Nothing more than you're doing now, only in reverse."

"Reverse?" she asked, a sinking feeling growing in her stomach. "That would be breaking into security systems … " A sick realization hit her. "You don't have a piece to donate, do you, Mr. Ford?"

"I've always hated modern art. And call me Flynn. Harry Flynn."

"I could call the police now and have the museum locked down before you would ever get here."

"I've already come and gone, love. Besides, the museum was never my target."

"But-"

"Meet me at St. James park tonight at seven if you want the job." Giving her no other option, he hung up, leaving Marjorie with her phone limp in her hand. Today was Mr Wilson's day off and she still had four hours left before her shift was over, but she ran from her desk and hailed a cab.

"Fourteen thirty-six Rochwell Cresent. As fast as you can." It was not by chance that she knew the director's address. Mr. Wilson liked to keep his employees in line not by kindness or subtle discipline but by blackmail and threats.

Mr. George Wilson was well off, something he was fond of parading around. He would often call Marjorie into his office and tell her about all the priceless relics he in his house, all the magnificent pieces of art. He asked her weekly to go home with him. Only to see his most prized possessions, of course. This was strictly professional after all.

However, the way his hands would brush against her when he thought no one else was looking spoke differently. She had evaded him as long as she could, politely declining his offers until he casually mentioned that he controlled the security of her job and could have her fired in an instant if the whim took hold of him.

She would have walked out on the job if George didn't know so much about her. Mr. Wilson liked to have the upper hand on his employees and often blatantly blackmailed them to keep them in line, or in Marjorie's case, keep her quiet. He knew that she had no education, he knew that she was in the country illegally. He knew that she would be thrown in jail if anyone caught wind of what she had done and he knew that she had no other options.

So she allowed herself to be harassed and intimidated at work out of sheer fright of being exposed.

The taxi screeched to a halt and she threw herself to his door. She had no particular feelings for the man, but if George Wilson had been stolen from, she was the prime suspect. The door was unlocked, very unusual for him. The house was as she remembered, marble floors gleaming, high ceilings garishly painted to mimic the Sistine Chapel. One curling staircase lead to the upper floor, where to the right was the master suite and to the left was Mr Wilson's office. But past the stairs was the sitting room. The same sitting room she had sat in and watched as he laboriously went through every relic he owned.

She found him pacing the floor, hands clenched at his side. The glass case switch usually stood in front of the window was nothing more than metal wires now, glass strewn across the floor. The case had held four of the sixty-seven rings once owned by an Ancient Nubian princess. They were missing now and worth close to four million each.

"Mr. Wilson..."

"How long did you know about this?"

Marjorie stumbled back at the accusation. "Sir?"

He lunged for her, grabbing her arm and pulling her to the case. His fingers dug into her skin. "You knew about these, you knew where they were, how much they were worth. You could have bypassed the security system, you crafty little bitch." He threw her down, the shattered glass cutting into her palms as she caught herself. "Tell me, was the Brit in on it too? Did you two plan this, huh?"

"I never … I don't know anything about this!" Marjorie said, trying to pull herself up.

"Do you think I'm that stupid? You're a criminal, you always have been. You think I don't know how you learned all your little tricks?" He pulled her up and dragged her along as he walked across the marble foyer. "I'm going to call the police and see you are locked up for this. You're going to go back to whatever Colombian hole you crawled out of and I'll personally see to it that you never come out again." He shoved her into the kitchen, grabbing the phone. He dialed two numbers before he heard the click of a gun being cocked.

"What?" Mr. Wilson said, turning to see the wealthy British man, Mr Ford pointing a pistol at his head.

"Put down the phone. Let go of the girl."

"You. This was all you." Mr. Wilson made no move to give to either of Flynn's commands. "I'll have you both arrested."

His thumb hadn't even made contact with the phone when the bullet went into his gut. Marjorie stumbled forward, clinging to the counter as her boss slumped down beside her. She screwed her eyes shut and tried to push aside the sickness that was rising up her throat.

"Rule number one: never close your eyes." Flynn grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the house.

"How … how did you know?" she asked as she was led to a white rental car.

"I had a hunch." He started the car and turned to her. "We have maybe two hours before someone realizes he's dead. Get what you need and then we're off to the border. Got it?"

Marjorie looked up from the blood stains on her shirt long enough to nod at him. He put his jacket in her lap, nodding at the stains before he drove off.

Marjorie now sat in the bistro, staring at the screen but seeing nothing. At first she'd stayed with him because she felt she had a debt to pay; he had saved her life after all. But then a month had passed, then another, then a year and she found herself still at his side. She no longer felt as if she owed him her life, but she couldn't bring herself to leave him.

Her coffee had gone cold an hour ago, but she drank it anyway, finally able to focus on the task at hand. The infamous oil lamp. One of the few things to survive the expedition from China. The thirteen ships laden down with treasures from Kublai Khan. Dead end there.

She switched over to learning every nook and cranny of the Istanbul Palace Museum, pulling up blueprints and maps. She meticulously mapped out a plan based on the layout alone. With the height of some of the towers and the number of security cameras, she figured it was a two person job.

She needed to figure out how many guards patrolled on any given night and what their patterns were. She fired off an email to a contact in Turkey and received a reply in a matter of minutes with the payroll of the museum and the security key to the cameras. It was a comfort to have friends in high places.

Marjorie spent the next few hours revising her plan and watching the security footage of the past three months to get an idea of the guards' patrol. What had initially been a two person job was looking more like four people at the least. Three people _could_pull it off if someone was far enough ahead to deal with the emergency lights and alarms, but having one person to deal with that from a safe location would be the safest route. She sketched out a basic plan, not knowing who their fourth was, on the back of a napkin, each square a different floor of the museum. It was a scribbly, ink-blotted mess by the time she was done, but it would keep everyone safe. From a distance, it looked a bit like the Syrian Modern Art Mr. Ford had been so fond of.

Grinning a little to herself, she shut her laptop and leaned on the table. It was getting close to four in the morning and the bistro was empty save for her and some patrons that had an early flight. She wanted to sleep but she knew it was pointless. They would be on a nine hour flight in a few hours and Marjorie could get some sleep then while Flynn and Chloe went over what she had come up with.

"Another coffee?" a waiter asked her. She nodded and held her mug out. Beside her, her phone buzzed.

_Coming back anytime soon?_

She was almost surprised that it had taken Flynn and Chloe so little time until she realized how long she'd been sitting there.

_I'll be there for check out in the morning. _She knew that there would be no response to that, no _see you tomorrow_, or _good night_. Flynn was a man of many words but few of them were ones of endearment.

Marjorie sat back in her little booth and settled in for a few hours of mindless solitaire on her phone before she headed back to the hotel and dove head first into whatever scheme Harry had drummed up this time.

**Uncharted © Naughty Dog**


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